Graeme North looks at what the clock tells us about the feature action from Doncaster and Saint-Cloud at the weekend, before he looks at an innovative race at Nottingham.
Doncaster and Saint-Cloud staged the final major European Group 1 contests for two-year-olds on Saturday and while neither El Bodegon’s win in the Criterium de Saint-Cloud nor Angel Bleu’s in the Criterium International ruffled the ante-post markets much for the 2022 Classics, Luxembourg’s victory in the Vertem Futurity Trophy saw his 2000 Guineas odds trimmed from a widespread 8/1 to 6/1 as his position as Derby favourite also hardened.
I remarked in this column after his win in the Beresford that his final-furlong burst on the back of an ordinarily-run opening seven furlongs – making him a 120 or thereabouts youngster on a combined timefigure/sectional upgrade rating - pushed his 2000 Guineas claims as much as those for the Derby, but on this occasion there didn’t seem to be much reason for his Classic odds to be cut further.
His final timefigure in another race run at no more than a fair gallop was a common-or-garden 90 and even after taking upgrades into account – and his was the largest of the principals – that figure still doesn’t reach three figures.
Luxembourg controlled the race from the front once he’d got there readily enough, and at no point did he do any more than necessary to stay a length in front, all the same running the last two furlongs faster than all the other winners on the card other than the five-furlong sprinter Copper Knight according to sectionals taken by Timeform.
Oddly for a race that was inaugurated as the Timeform Gold Cup to fill a void in the calendar at the time for high-class staying youngsters, the Futurity has become a better pointer to the 2000 Guineas in recent years than the Dewhurst. Three of Aidan O’Brien’s last four winners (Camelot, Magna Grecia and Saxon Warrior) have gone straight to Newmarket and followed up, and while Luxembourg looks to have a little bit to find with Native Trail, I’d have him clear second favourite for the 2000 over Coroebus.
Mention of Coroebus brings me around to his stable-companion Goldspur who finished a slightly underwhelming third in what looked a weak-looking Criterium de Saint-Cloud.
According to the tracking data provided by McLloyd on the France Galop website, Goldspur ran the slowest final 600m of all the runners, while fourth-placed Buckaroo ran the section easily the quickest.
The race might have come a bit soon for Goldspur after his excellent Zetland Stakes effort and I’m sure he’ll turn up in something like the Sandown Classic Trial next season and show himself much better than this.
Sectional upgrades run through a universal finishing speed model (Saint-Cloud isn’t dissimilar to Ascot or Kempton anyway, so the averaged pars for those tracks could be substituted instead) suggest Buckaroo was too far out of his ground and should have won, and he’ll probably turn out to be smart when put over a mile and a half.
Angel Bleu made it back-to-back wins in France in the Criterium International, not bad going for a horse turned over at Leicester right at the start of April, but the sectionals point to Purplepay being an unlucky loser even before the significant trouble in running she found is factored in. Her profile is not unlike Angel Bleu’s, nearly continually progressive from a low starting point, and she must be a leading contender for the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches on this evidence.
The first Cheltenham meeting of the season rather than the hyped-up Chepstow two-day meeting is for most observers the proper start to the new jumps season, even if the last weekend’s fare was unusually on the tame side.
Regular readers will know that I like to use pace in conjunction with final time to identify form that is either stronger or weaker than it looks on paper using conventional lengths and pounds analysis, and among several noteworthy performances last week the one that most caught my eye, though it wasn’t unexpected, came from Fair Frontiers in a novice hurdle at Worcester.
The last race of an eight-race card run on heavy ground, and the longest of the three races run over hurdles, are not circumstances conducive to the fastest time between a given set of obstacles, but Fair Frontiers ran the distance from the first hurdle in the straight on the first circuit (i.e the first hurdle jumped in the two-mile race) to the last hurdle (I didn’t use the finishing line as Fair Frontiers was eased to a near walk passing the line) on the final circuit faster 1.9 seconds faster than Bigbadmattie in the earlier two-and-a-half mile hurdle and 0.1 seconds faster than Ucanaver managed in the two-miler.
Initially converting those time differences to pounds and adjusting for the weights carried by the three horses gives Fair Frontiers a ‘pace’ rating of 134 on a line through Bigbadmattie and 130 through Ucanaver.
Those calculations would be fine if only races were run at the same pace no matter what the distance, but we know that races over two mile seven furlongs contested by horses of the same ability as those running over two miles are typically run around three seconds slower, and, remember, we are comparing three races over the same inter-hurdle distance.
Recalculating Fair Frontier’s figure after taking that information into account puts him up around 140, which is good enough to think he’ll make an Albert Bartlett contender.
I said ‘not unexpectedly’ earlier as I suspect the horse that had beaten him on his previous run when he was trained in Ireland - Gars De Sceaux – will turn out to be a top Cheltenham novice prospect too, with the Festival Chase undoubtedly the race for him.
One of the top three or four Irish four-year-old pointers of his year group, Gars De Sceaux looked out of the top drawer when winning a novice hurdle hard held upped to just short of three miles at Navan last March.
There was no doubting the regard in which Gordon Elliott holds him judging by his recent comments in an ATR stable tour, and had he gone to Cheltenham for the Albert Bartlett instead of Navan I very much doubt he’d be anywhere near the 33/1 still available with a few firms for the Festival Chase. That won’t last once he’s made his reappearance, mark my words.
If anyone is unaware, there will be a little bit of racing history created at Nottingham on Wednesday when the track stages the first modern-day all-aged handicap open to two-year-old’s (there may have been some in the distant past, and hopefully a historian or two will tell me if that is the case).
I like to think I may have played a small part in this innovation having run the idea more than once over the years past Graeme Smith, Head of Two-Year-Old Handicapping at the BHA, so credit to my former colleague for helping drive through the change which would have first taken place last year apparently had Covid not caused changes to the intended calendar.
There are a handful of established races each year in which two-year-olds can take on their elders – the Group 1 Nunthorpe, the Listed Scarborough Stakes, a conditions race at Newmarket and a classified stakes at Southwell (there was also a one-off conditions race at Wolverhampton back in 2006) and overall the youngsters have a good record with 18 winners from 106 runners at a strike-rate of 17%, including all three runnings of Southwell’s low-grade affair.
My suspicion is that they would have had an excellent chance of winning the race on Wednesday too had it been an ordinary 0-75 rather than a 0-95 which was ever only going to attract youngsters that would have half an eye on black type affairs. #
Several years ago, I was responsible for changes to Timefom’s Flat weight-for-age scale driven by timefigure data which highlighted shortcomings in certain areas of the scale in existence at that time, but increasingly I wonder whether those changes (which are far less generous than the BHA in certain areas) went quite far enough.
Interestingly, all the races so far allowing juveniles to take on older horses have been at five or six furlongs. The real proof of the pudding for the efficacy of the weight-for-age scale will be if the BHA ever schedule all-aged handicaps over seven furlongs or a mile.
There is no reason why they can’t, of course, and I’d bet good money two-year-olds would farm them. As it is, well done to Alice Haynes who is the only trainer to have taken up the challenge at Nottingham, and I can’t let her charge Josies Kid go unbacked even though he is 5lb out of the weights.
